Helped by Ryan Gosling: More trouble than getting hit by a taxi?

Mark Gauthier / Los Angeles Times

4:40 p.m. EST, April 5, 2012|Matt Donnelly and Christie D'Zurilla

We get it, Ryan Gosling. You know how to help a stranger — and boy, did the many headlines Tuesday remind us of that fact after the actor kept a woman from getting pegged by an oncoming cab in New York.

The "Ides of March" actor seems on a bit of a roll lately in helping his fellow man. The taxi incident comes not long after he helped break up a street fight in that same fair city. Of course, word of both incidents came via social media — though this time around the aftermath is a little different. As in, there is an aftermath.

"I literally, LITERALLY just got saved from a car by Ryan Gosling. Literally. That actually just happened," British journalist Laurie Penny said Tuesday in the first of several tweets. "I was crossing 6th avenue in a new pink wig. Not looking the right way because I am from London. Ryan Gosling grabbed me away from a taxi.

It was at this point that people — one on site and others in Twitter responses — started informing her that she was in fact lucky to have been almost hit by a cab. Or was it lucky that Gosling had intervened? Let's go with a mix of the two.

But because no good deed goes uncritiqued, later Tuesday via Gawker we heard more from Penny, who further described the incident in an article — headlined "Ryan Gosling Saved Me From a Speeding Car But There's War In the Middle East So Everyone Calm Down" — that carefully pointed out, in case we hadn't noticed, that there are more important heroes than "The Notebook" actor hanging around this country, not to mention more important news:

"The real heroes I've met in America are risking everything to make sure that the United States doesn't slide further into bigotry, inequality and violence whilst everyone is distracted by the everyday doings of celebrities."

Oh heavens. Need we point out that this distraction might be yet another way the Ryan Goslings of the world are saving us from peril in the course of daily life, and that Laurie Penny was rather dashing as well as she shared her that-never-happens-to-me moment in real time? Is it wrong to take a break from our relentless multitasking? The opportunity to fantasize certainly explains why last week's Mega Millions jackpot fixated the nation.

By the by — Penny's Twitter bio now reads, "Author, journalist, feminist, reprobate. Please do not talk to me about Ryan Gosling, thanks."

As of Thursday, she too was taking a break: "I'm leaving Twitter until all this bloody fuss dies down," she wrote. "Honestly, it would have been less trouble to get run over."